Maxed Out

Review in a Hurry:  A rabble-rousing documentary that aims to do for the credit card industry what Super Size Me did for McDonald's. Which is to say, not much of a favor.

The Bigger Picture:  James Scurlock's debut feature has some sweet touches that make its very bitter medicine a little more palatable: humorously ironic educational film snips and some brutally honest interview subjects. Still, it's hard to watch it and not walk out angry at someone. Maxed Out exposes some arguably egregious tactics on the part of consumer debt companies, particularly those that focus on the surprisingly profitable high-risk debtors: people who are unable to pay off their debts, trapped under a mountain of interest.

It's hard to say what's more frightening about Maxed Out. The personal stories are naturally heart wrenching, including mothers who've lost heavily leveraged children to suicide, victims of nightmarish bureaucratic errors who can't convince anyone in power that they're still alive, mentally handicapped people browbeaten into taking out loans they never needed. But the casual statistics thrown in to illustrate the larger problems are terrifying as well; negative rates of personal savings and nearly a trillion dollars in unpaid credit card debt alone make it clear to the audience that something has to give.

If you've got a few sizable minimum-payment bills at home, Maxed Out confirms that you're not alone. But this is the problem, not the solution, and Maxed Out doesn't offer much else besides a wake-up call. Still, for that, it's owed something, and seeing it would do nicely.

The 180—a Second Opinion:  There are some missing pieces in Maxed Out—nobody forced credit on most of these subjects, for one. And there's some misplaced focus as well; Scurlock's found some compelling worst-case subjects, but this polarizes the subject a little too much.